Jah Wobble is an unpredictable workaholic. Once known as John Wardle, back in the days before he joined forces with John Lydon in Public Image Ltd (Pil), he is constantly changing direction and forever releasing albums. The past few months have seen the arrival of his three-CD anthology I Could Have Been a Contender, reviving his work with Pil, the Invaders of the Heart, Bill Laswell, Brain Eno, and now Live in Leuven, recorded with Can's Jaki Liebezeit. And yet here he was at the 100 Club doing something quite different - playing English folk songs, now given the distinctive Wobble once-over.
Which meant, of course, that a whole variety of old favourites now didn't sound much like traditional songs at all. Singer Liz Carter, in a black cocktail dress, managed to pretend she was back in some Hartlepool folk club, as she gallantly launched into her gentle versions of Blacksmith or Byker Hill, only for the songs to be gradually deconstructed around her. At one end of the stage were Jean-Pierre Rasle, playing a variety of bagpipes and pipes, and the guitarist Chris Cookson, providing wailing slide effects, while beyond the percussionists sat Mr Wobble himself. Dressed in black hat, black jacket and tie, he pumped out the rapid-fire muddy riffs on his bass and gradually hi-jacked the songs into a clattering, echoing dub work-out.
And for the most part it actually worked rather well. The full-tilt approach and sometimes unfortunate sound mix meant that there was less subtlety than on Wobble's album, English Roots Music, but these were sturdy songs and even an old standard like Rocky Road to Dublin was given new life from the Wobble battering. He veered off to revive the Invaders' Visions of You (with Wobble now singing and Carter taking the role of Sinead O'Connor) and ended with a lengthy instrumental work-out featuring pedal-steel exponent BJ Cole. But the English folk songs sounded as cutting-edge as anything he has done.
